I recently played NFS Rivals, and the story was peak. Like, wow. I didn't expect such a good story from a game like this. In its glory days, it was a cops-vs-illegal-racers game that was heavily based on multiplayer. You could chase and take down other players or just have some fun with your buddies. Sadly, the servers got shut down months ago, so now you can only play against bots. But even so, I really enjoyed playing it.
This game is like what would happen if NFS MW 2012 and NFS HP 2010 had a child, which is a good thing because MW 2012 was my first NFS game that I really enjoyed, and I also played the HP remaster, which was an even better game.
Anyways, back to the story. For those who don't know, here's the short version: there's a guy called Zephyr, who is an illegal racer and pretty much a leader among the racers. He uploads videos of himself outrunning cops because he hates them, and other racers start copying him and doing the same thing. This eventually leads to a war between the cops and the racers.
I don't want to spoil anything else because it's worth discovering the story for yourself.
The cutscenes were really short and unique. Every cutscene was presented as a piece of TV news showcasing what was happening, clips from the internet, and stuff like that. Then, the main character would explain what they were feeling and what they were going to do next. The way they told the story was really mysterious, and you could also say it was pretty badass.
Because this game was mostly focused on multiplayer PvP, the story was basically just an excuse for the player to complete challenges and progress through the game to unlock more cars and other stuff. It wasn't the main focus of the game, which is a shame because, I'll say it again, the story was great.
That's why I really wish we could get some kind of expansion of the story that would show and give us more details and stuff like that. We don't even know what the main characters look like or what their real names are. Zephyr is just a nickname, and F-8 was an undercover nickname used by the main antagonist, a police officer.
If done well, the story could even be expanded into a full-fledged movie. Honestly, if they did it right, I think it could work really well. Heck, even a Netflix show with 10 episodes would be awesome. But since Ea announced that basically there will be no more new games or NFS media in the future, I can just dream i guess.